ReadWriteWeb

This week I gave a short presentation at a local event, Webstock Mini, in which I looked at some of the trends we're seeing in Web Technology this year. The presentation is embedded below. I gave the term 'Web 3.0' a bit of a ribbing. But my overall theme was that there is indeed a difference in the products we're seeing in 2009, compared to the ones we saw at the height of 'Web 2.0' (2005-08).

In 2009 we're seeing more products based on open, structured data e.g. Wolfram Alpha. We're seeing more real-time apps e.g. Twitter, OneRiot. And we're seeing better filters e.g. FriendFeed (and Facebook, which copies FriendFeed - er, I mean is inspired by).

During a talk at the New England Database Day conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Google's Alon Halevy admitted that the search giant has "not been doing a good job" presenting the structured data found on the web to its users. By "structured data," Halevy was referring to the databases of the "deep web" - those internet resources that sit behind forms and site-specific search boxes, unable to be indexed through passive means.